Boring and predictable . It’s supposed to be set in the regency era , but the characters do not act like it

This was my first ARC/Net Galley read and I must say I loved it. I’m a sucker for a period piece and this one was well done.

You immediately love and respect the protagonist, Lady Petra Forsyth, and the other strong women she surrounds herself with. Petra and her friends are forced to navigate the world as “ladys” while trying to ensure their own rights and freedoms. The premise of the story is not only creative and thrilling, but also a strong commentary on past and present views of female health, as well as mental health in general.

My only real complaint is that I sometimes had trouble keeping all of the characters straight, since many of their names were similar. Additionally, I would have appreciated less fluff about secondary characters, and more one-one time between Petra and Duncan earlier on in the book.

Overall, it was a great read! That cliffhanger at the end made me even more excited for the next one!

The clever title and charming cover attracted me to Think Like a Lady, Act Like a Lord. Unfortunately, the story itself didn’t live up to these initial positive impressions.

After her fiancée dies shortly before their wedding, Lady Petra Forsyth decides that she will never marry. She has the means to maintain her independence, thanks to an inheritance from her mother.
Petra learns that a friend of hers has died under strange circumstances, and eventually she discovers a dangerous private asylum where men pay to have their wives and daughters disappear.

Pacing was slow and seemed to plod along, weighed down by an overabundance of exposition about even minor points. The effort to weave in messages about topics such as women’s rights, mental health and diversity was heavy-handed and became repetitive.

The most significant issue was the inconsistency of the main characters. Petra is supposed to be an intelligent, strong, independent woman. Yet she frequently behaves incredibly naively, and her headstrong behavior gets her into risky situations that she could have avoided. For example, she returns to her home after her father has left, even though she has been warned that her uncle is there, and has ordered the house immediately closed, despite the fact that her father had told her she had two weeks to close the London townhouse before returning to their country estate. Even though she fears that her uncle is trying to have her committed to the same asylum from which a friend of hers has narrowly managed to escape, she remains in a room alone with him, and continues to drink a glass of wine after noticing that it tastes odd. Unsurprisingly, she ends up drugged, abducted and restrained at the asylum.

It is also hard to believe that her widowed father, with whom she is supposed to have a close and loving relationship, would take the word of a stranger regarding Petra’s “troubling” behavior, without talking first to his daughter for her side of the story. The earl’s quickness to believe the worst of his beloved daughter without seeking any confirmation from her or others he could trust conflicted with his earlier behavior.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #StMartinsPress for the ARC.

This was the perfect book for a snowy day. I love the historical references and a little mystery is never a bad thing.

I enjoyed the characters a lot.

Oh my goodness this book was absolutely what I needed. I had been in a reading slump and this got me out of it!